Tuesday, 3 May 2011

What’s an unfashionable brewery?

What’s an unfashionable brewery? Is it one whose staff don terrible clothes and refuse to look like rock stars? Or is it a brewery whose beers refuse to — as what is commonly known — stretch the boundary of what we know as beer (guilty of using the phrase several times but…shrugs shoulders)? What’s a fashionable brewery then? That’s an easier question to answer. BrewDog, Thornbridge, Kernel, Camden: four names that swim into my consciousness with the sleekness of a torpedo slamming into the steel plates of a rusty old destroyer (the latter a metaphor for unfashionable beers perhaps?). Hops, collaborations (it’s good to see that beer has reclaimed the word collaboration from its taint of Vichy and Quisling), a certain swagger, shout-outs from the fans, expectations, great epoch shattering beers (if beer can shatter an epoch which it palpably cannot but what the hell). What about the unfashionable breweries then? Are they doomed to linger alone and unloved by those who see themselves in the vanguard of beer fashion? To be picked up and preened by the nameless many?

These navel-gazing thoughts come to me after I’d drunk a bottle of The Leveller from Springhead, a defiantly unfashionable brewery in defiantly unfashionable Sutton-on-Trent. Visited them several years back, always enjoyed Roaring Meg, their strongish blond beer whose naming following the brewery’s tradition of using an English Civil War theme for their beers’ names (Roaring Meg was a cannon used during that period — it roared and like ships the guns were given women’s names, perhaps a subconscious male desire to haul pacifistic women onto the militarist bandwagon). At the time the Springhead brewery was an internal landscape of stainless steel, pumps and undeterminable metal instruments. A brick-built, single-storied home that had little romance about it — they had moved there in 1992 and expanded to four units. Now their expansion continues and they’ve recently moved to a converted old mill in a north Notts village and I suspect that the new plant will have a similarly abstract ambience about its interior. They might be unfashionable but they’re doing well.

And The Leveller (I don’t think I have to explain the origins of this name)? It’s a dark chestnut colour with crimson tints. The nose has a dusty, powdery chocolate — milk — character. On the first gulp I’m minded to enjoy its milky, coffee-mocha chocolate feathering with the sweetness kept under reins by a resiny, earthy, almost woody-like sternness; there are also some hints of blackcurrant. The carbonation is a bit brisk but it’s nevertheless a beer that I rather enjoyed. And all this from a brewery that slips below the radar — it’s not going to change the world but it’s rather delicious and a pretty satisfying partner to roast lamb (even use some in the gravy).

13 comments:

I don’t know, unsung suggests to me something that is ignored even though it is good, while Springhead is palpably not unsung as they seem to do rather well. Nick Drake or Microdisney was/were unsung, Chris Rea was unfashionable (not that I am advocating listening to him).

I think I much prefer breweries who quietly turn out great beer without making so much noise about what they're doing. It's hard to trust something that's "fashionable" even if it does happen to be good, isn't it?

Flagon — it’s the Burton Bridge Inn and I think that’s a pint of their Porter, and there’s fashion and then there’s styleHearty — I like fashionable beers and unfashionable ones, but don’t forget that some of the unfashionable breweries come up with PR nonsense as well

Fashion is about community. I.T. has perpetuated the “beer community” and lead to the concept of fashionable breweries in the beer community. If you define fashionable as universally popular I'm afraid Peroni, Modello and Carlsberg are the in crowd. The question is are beers fashionable to the beer community analogous to haute couture, too refined or edgy for everyday dress, yet still influencing high street fashion, or to obscure Goth clothes mocked by mainstream society as ridiculous. I have no doubt that a lot of people will misinterpret this comment.

I echo Zak. Now I'm over 30, I postively revel in my uncoolness, using as a wind-up weapon to the younger chaps and chapesses I work with. Such as going on about what a great song 'Easy Lover' is, and watching them squirm. On the beer front, Roaring Meg gives me a headache. It's one of the few beers that does this. I can have only one, and feel as if I've had fourteen the next day. Leveller was ok though, no headaches!

LeighI’m afraid I don’t know what Easy Lover is, well; I probably do but I’m not going to admit it; on the other hand, echoing my dissolute late 1980s Sonic Youth are still cool even if I don’t listen to them and Wedding Present remain thin gruel.I always use Abbot if there’s no all-bran in the house…